Religion News: Bill passes to allow religion in schools in Kentucky

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Feb 24, 2017 at 11:30 AMFeb 24, 2017 at 11:31 AM

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WEEK IN RELIGIONPublic schools in Kentucky wishing to host programs or plays that contain religious themes could soon be allowed to after the state senate passed a bill that would permit all pubic schools to use religion as a way to advance learning on school property. The bill also states guidelines to be set for public schools for students to formally express personal religious beliefs. The bill passed the senate with a 31-3 vote. The bill would also give teachers the license to use the Bible to teach religious history and the schools — at their discretion — could also permit school play performances which promote a tangible religious or cultural heritage. The bill came about after a school in Eastern Kentucky removed religious passages from he school’s performance of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” last year. Although the bill is supported by many Kentucky parents, American Civil Liberties Union representatives of Kentucky said the bill could lead to teachers “preaching” instead of instructing. The bill will now move to the Kentucky House of Representatives for approval. — More Content Now

SURVEY SAYSNearly 70 percent of Americans support ‘Heartbeat’ billAccording to a new poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans support making a “heartbeat bill” a federal law. The poll, which was conducted by the Barna Group, found that 69 percent of Americans agreed with the statement: “If a doctor is able to detect the heartbeat on an unborn baby, that unborn baby should be legally protected.”— More Content Now

GOOD BOOK?“A Book of American Martyrs: A Novel” by Joyce Carol OatesIn this striking, enormously affecting novel, Joyce Carol Oates tells the story of two very different and yet intimately linked American families. Luther Dunphy is an ardent Evangelical who envisions himself as acting out God’s will when he assassinates an abortion provider in his small Ohio town while Augustus Voorhees, the idealistic but self-regarding doctor who is killed, leaves behind a wife and children scarred and embittered by grief. In her moving, insightful portrait, Joyce Carol Oates fully inhabits the perspectives of two interwoven families whose destinies are defined by their warring convictions and squarely-but with great empathy-confronts an intractable, abiding rift in American society. — Ecco

THE WORDreincarnation: The belief that a person’s soul is reborn in another body after physical death.— ReligionStylebook.com